Tag: article

So you want to be an ally to women? Or, you’re already an ally to women and want to check in and see how to up your game? Or you’ve never thought about harassment and violence against women until now and you’re ready to make some small changes that will have a large impact?

Let’s talk about Rape Anxiety. It’s a thing. Even I have dealt with this when I am walking alone at night or when I’m near large groups of men (regardless of the time of day). When I’m out walking/jogging, I am regularly scanning to see if someone might be following me. Yeah, that might sound crazy, but I’d rather be safe than sorry. So please, regardless of your personal experiences, if someone speaks to you about sexual harassment or gendered violence, please take it seriously.

“But even well-intentioned guys may be unaware of how their position of power creates intimidating situations.”

1. I need you to listen to me.

Resist your impulse to “not-all-men” your way out of the conversation. If I’m talking to you about this issue, it’s because I trust you and I think it’s an important discussion to have.

Please understand that my experiences may change your worldview a little bit — and that yours might change mine. If both of us approach the conversation with the assumption that we have something to learn, chances are we will.

2. I need you to be aware of how your behavior could unintentionally make the women (and femme and queer people) around you uncomfortable.

Maybe you’re trying to chat up a woman at the bar who doesn’t seem interested and you’re just not taking a hint. Maybe a step in the right direction is realizing that the woman who’s glancing back at you while you walk down the street is trying to assess if you’re a threat.

When you’re more in tune with the harassment that women experience every day simply by existing in the world, the next step is to notice if and how you play a role in those situations. Lots of times your threat is harmless, of course. But it never hurts to think critically about how you treat women, especially those you don’t know, in public.

3. I need you to use your privilege as a shield.

Guys, it’s exhausting to have to do all of this work ourselves. We really want your help.

The perpetrators of gendered microaggressions, sexual harassment, and sexual violence aren’t strangers — they’re the men in your classes, your workplace, your gym. So if you see something, please say something.

If a coworker makes an inappropriate comment to you about another coworker’s body, please tell them it’s not OK.

If you see a dude harassing a female friend at a party or a bar, please tactfully interject yourself into the situation to give her an out.

And, for the love of all that is holy, PLEASE teach your sons, brothers, and friends to do the same.

It may be uncomfortable to start talking about sexual violence and harassment, but it’s so, so necessary for all of us.

Those conversations could make a real difference in whether people like me feel safe and comfortable in the world.

I read this article in the New York Times and I think it’s wildly important for people to read. It’s about how changing the lives of
women and girls in the developing world can change everything. Please read this and understand how fortunate we are as women from a “developed-nation” and to remember that many don’t have it as easy as we do.

For the full article, click here otherwise some poignant pieces from the article:

IN THE 19TH CENTURY, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape.

Yet if the injustices that women in poor countries suffer are of paramount importance, in an economic and geopolitical sense the opportunity they represent is even greater. “Women hold up half the sky,” in the words of a Chinese saying, yet that’s mostly an aspiration: in a large slice of the world, girls are uneducated and women marginalized, and it’s not an accident that those same countries are disproportionately mired in poverty and riven by fundamentalism and chaos. There’s a growing recognition among everyone from the World Bank to the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to aid organizations like CARE that focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism. That’s why foreign aid is increasingly directed to women. The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution.

…

The global statistics on the abuse of girls are numbing. It appears that more girls and women are now missing from the planet, precisely because they are female, than men were killed on the battlefield in all the wars of the 20th century. The number of victims of this routine “gendercide” far exceeds the number of people who were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century.

For those women who live, mistreatment is sometimes shockingly brutal. If you’re reading this article, the phrase “gender discrimination” might conjure thoughts of unequal pay, underfinanced sports teams or unwanted touching from a boss. In the developing world, meanwhile, millions of women and girls are actually enslaved. While a precise number is hard to pin down, the International Labor Organization, a U.N. agency, estimates that at any one time there are 12.3 million people engaged in forced labor of all kinds, including sexual servitude. In Asia alone about one million children working in the sex trade are held in conditions indistinguishable from slavery, according to a U.N. report. Girls and women are locked in brothels and beaten if they resist, fed just enough to be kept alive and often sedated with drugs — to pacify them and often to cultivate addiction. India probably has more modern slaves than any other country.

…

[The author’s] interviews and perusal of the data available suggest that the poorest families in the world spend approximately 10 times as much (20 percent of their incomes on average) on a combination of alcohol, prostitution, candy, sugary drinks and lavish feasts as they do on educating their children (2 percent). If poor families spent only as much on educating their children as they do on beer and prostitutes, there would be a breakthrough in the prospects of poor countries. Girls, since they are the ones kept home from school now, would be the biggest beneficiaries. Moreover, one way to reallocate family expenditures in this way is to put more money in the hands of women. A series of studies has found that when women hold assets or gain incomes, family money is more likely to be spent on nutrition, medicine and housing, and consequently children are healthier.

Such research has concrete implications: for example, donor countries should nudge poor countries to adjust their laws so that when a man dies, his property is passed on to his widow rather than to his brothers. Governments should make it easy for women to hold property and bank accounts — 1 percent of the world’s landowners are women — and they should make it much easier for microfinance institutions to start banks so that women can save money.

In general, aid appears to work best when it is focused on health, education and microfinance (although microfinance has been somewhat less successful in Africa than in Asia). And in each case, crucially, aid has often been most effective when aimed at women and girls; when policy wonks do the math, they often find that these investments have a net economic return. Only a small proportion of aid specifically targets women or girls, but increasingly donors are recognizing that that is where they often get the most bang for the buck.

Subscribe via Email

Up Coming Weekend

An intensive weekend dedicated to improving your technical skills so you can lead/follow just about anything. Focus: Spinning and Turning
~ Feb 9-11 2018 - New York ~

Interview Series

An interview series about competing and judging from some of the top Competitors and Judges in the Lindy Hop Scene today! Check out what Annie, Bobby, Alice, Nick, Sylvia (and more!!) have to share about winning, dealing with nerves, dancing your truth, and connecting to the music.

Up Coming Weekends

An intensive weekend dedicated to improving your technical skills so you can lead/follow just about anything.
Focus: Lindy Hop
~ Apr 27-29 2018 - London ~

Learn to Style and Swivel with Jo

Spiff up your lindy hop and get fancy with Jo! In this video, she will teach you how to get powerful, feminine swivels and how to play with them, a variety of slides, and some sweet variations!
- On DVD or Digital Download -

Learn from Jo Hoffberg Online!

Jo is now a featured dance instructor on iDance.net, where you can download instructional dance video clips for just $1.99 each. There are hundreds of dance lessons online, including classes with Kevin & Jo in Lindy Hop, Aerials, 1920s Charleston, Solo Jazz, and Technique on Spinning, Swivels, and Swing Outs.